“Oh, yah! You betcha!” OR “Longest post ever”(Oh, stop your bitching and just read the damn thing. It’s not like I’ve been overwhelming you with blog posts lately, you big whiner.)

Few things are worse then hearing your name paged over the airport speaker system informing, “Salt Lake City passenger, ‘Loralee Choat-ay’, please come immediately to gate E15. Your flight is holding and is ready for departure.”, when you SWEAR that you have 35 minutes until your flight leaves.

That is, there is nothing worse unless you are hearing aforementioned announcement at the asscrack of dawn after getting zero sleep the night before due to anxiety of dying while flying in a plane the size of a Diet Coke can and/or missing your flight, and you are in the ladies room simultaneously having a panic attack and peeing like a racehorse and realize seconds after the announcer hideously mispronounces your name that THERE IS NO TOILET PAPER IN YOUR STALL.

THAT is much, much worse, my friends. You’ll just have to trust me on this one.

As my flabby ass jiggled and my feet thundered as I ran and panted down the concourse to my gate, I kept cursing my decision to not continue with boot-camp classes because then I might not feel like I was inhaling hydrochloric acid into my lungs. I was still confused about my departure time, so while I was running I pawed through my purse to get out my boarding pass and saw that YES, I was right about the time. I should have still had plenty of time to board my flight.

When I finally got to the gate, I couldn’t even speak to ask, “WTF, yo?!”. I just stood there gasping, sputtering and clutching my pounding chest in a manner that probably looked like I was feeling myself up.
I mean, I love my boobies, but even I have some amount of public restraint.

Sometimes.

Where was I?

Oh, yes. Sputtering, gasping, turning white and purple and spewing ropes of mucous at the gate attendant.

He guessed who I was.

“Oh, we just wanted to leave early. No problem. You’re fine.”

I AM? Try telling that to the very unfortunate guy who had to endure my mucous-infested coughing and wheezing for half of the flight as I tried to get enough oxygen to not pass out on him. Heart rate induced asthma can be a real bitch sometimes. I should have brought my inhaler, dammit.

I lived through the flight and on my way back to Cache Valley, I stopped in Salt Lake and met my beautiful, sassy, blogging friend, Sarah, for lunch at a restaurant that had a dessert case so glorious I considered raping it when I passed by on my way to the ladies room.

There was a lot of peeing going on with me today.

As I said, Sarah is gorgeous. I look like a homeless person (asscrack of dawn flight, remember?) but that is ok. If you look good all the time people expect too much of you. Personally, I am fond of getting a standing ovation for bothering to comb my hair.

The funny coinkidink about having lunch with Sarah is that is pretty much how I kicked off my whirlwind trip over a week ago. And yes, you are going to be subjected to it all. I will try to be brief, but try not to stick a fork in your eye, ok? I’ll sum up into brief paragraphs, if it makes it easier. I’ll even put in pithy little titles so you don’t get board.

“Who the hell knew that Diet Coke isn’t organic???”

As I was saying, I had lunch with Sarah and two fabulous bloggity friends, Jon Deal (Ransom Note Typography) and Brad (That One Guy). I didn’t have my stupid camera charged, so I don’t have a photo of the four of us, but I loved that lunch. We all got along like peas and carrots.I could lunch, talk, laugh and just be totally myself with this group of people until the end of time.

Indeed, the only drawback was when the waitress at the very tasty organic restaurant we dined at informed me that they only served “Organic” drinks and Diet Coke DOES NOT QUALIFY?!

WTF?

I plan on petitioning an organic hippie compound in Berkley to change that. Email me if you want to join in my quest.

“Fat cat in a little coat”

After lunch, I met Mandi and Jen for Jen’s baby shower. I heart them both. Mandi flew in from Georgia to throw the shower and Jen just looked radiant and adorable.

Plus, she has the fattest, most adorable, luscious, fatty fattakins cat on the planet. He is bigger than a huge watermelon and HIS name is “Abby”. Considering my female cat’s name is “Wilbur”, this just makes him rock even more.

The next morning I flew to Minneapolis to be with my brother. I already talked about some of the fun things we did in the previous post and I am going to add photos now that I have access to my photos.

The trip was a blast, even though we had no furniture in the house and I forgot my blowdryer. I guess the trip could have been titled “In which Loralee’s hair perpetually looks like a frizzy crap sandwich”, but I was just so happy to be in Minnesota that I didn’t care. (Too much).

“Loralee was here”

One of my favoritest things about this trip was hanging out with bloggity friends, both new and old. First off, I met Gretchen, who was so fun, vibrant and talented. She mainly blogs about her crafting, which she is ridiculously talented at, but she has the most fabulous personality as well.

We hit it off so well that we set up a second bloggity date where she braved my bad baking gene by teaching me to make rolls. I will post the whole recipe and photos plus directions at a later time, but these are the VERY BEST ROLLS I HAVE EVER SCARFED DOWN.

I want marry them and have little roll babies. Of course, this might be awkward as it would mean that I would totally fall into that category of “Those that eat their young”

I loved them and so did my brother, Brad. He has now commanded that I am in charge of roll making at all family gatherings (even if we’re not eating anything else. I still have to make the rolls.). They were soooo yummy.

And? To illustrate her personality, she posted this blog post with this photo after I left our “Roll Afternoon”. It is simply titled, “Loralee was here”.

You can see WHY I laughed my ass off. I so love the empty Diet Coke cups. HEE!

“Is an Amber Alert needed??”

Speaking of amazing baking and hilarity, I also got to hang out with “The Over Thinker”. OT has such snarky, witty comments on my blog, I love her. She is a million times better in person. Let’s add to the fact that she made me a tub of vanilla cupcakes with vanilla bean buttercream frosting and that she has glasses very similar to mine and that just makes her perfection in my eyes.

Because she is anonymous in her blogging I can’t tell you THE COOLEST THINGS ABOUT HER, but I will say that she is an ordained minister and is going to marry her friend this summer in the Teatons. How awesome is THAT? I could have spent DAYS with her and not gotten board. She rocks the house.

I did force her to stay in my brother’s basement and look for a photo that I had “Somewhere” in the millions of unorganized files splayed across my computer. Her husband didn’t send out a search party, but it was close.

“Deep, lovely waters”
Meeting Tasha and Amber for sushi was also lovely. I love talking to them. They are secure, intelligent, ambitious young women that are going to do some amazing things in their lives. Both of them have been reading me since the first few months of my blog and are Bemidji state alums. They are wicked smart and I love listening to them and their conversation. I am so very fond of everything about them. We had a lovely lunch and whiled away the time walking, shopping and talking. Every minute was relaxed, familiar and much needed moment for my soul.

Here are the lovelies. I would post a picture of all three of us, but I kept cutting off half of Tasha’s head in the photo.

I mentioned that I LOVED hanging out with my brother, Brad, right? He is very similar to me in his sense of humor, as illustrated here:

“The taco champion of Minnehaha*”

“Brad, I cannot eat one more taco. Two is my limit. You’ll have to eat the last one.”
“What? You can’t eat three?”
“No.”
“You’re sure???? Not EVEN if I turn it into a taco eating contest????”

We are the weirdest family I know.

Speaking of Minnehawhaw Falls, they are pretty, are they not?

I ended up seeing Jessie the day before I left.

I love Jessie so much. She is like a sister to me. She is one of my Bemidji readers and she has had the coolest, most varied life, living in India, a lean-to in the woods, hopping freight trains to Alaska and she just successfully defended her thesis. We went to lunch and coffee and talked and talked and talked. One day I hope to have half of the inner-peace that she does. She is amazing.

While I am SO GLAD to be home, I love Minnesota and the people in it. I am sad my brother moved from there, but hope, hope, HOPE that I can get there again.

As long as I don’t have to fly in a freaking tiny plane while needing to pee.

**Ok, this conversation didn’t REALLY occur in Minnehawhaw, but it is just SUCH a great name to say. And it sounds way better than “The taco champion of Apple Valley”, you know?